


Stay Out of the Kitchen

by distant_rose



Series: Ro Writes Canon...Somewhat [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, Walking In On Someone, in which I am totally evil to Henry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 13:09:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13718379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distant_rose/pseuds/distant_rose
Summary: Henry Mills is having a bad week. His Overwatch team isn’t doing too hot, he failed his math quiz and now Regina has taken his video game privileges away. What could possibly make it any worse?





	Stay Out of the Kitchen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ForestIyari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestIyari/gifts).



> I can’t believe I actually wrote this. No, I can but at the same time I can because I live for awkward domesticity and I refused to believe that there wasn’t ever an awkward moment were Henry walked in on Emma and Killian going at it. I’ve discussed this at length with @forestiyari though we went into much more graphic detail than this. This is definitely tame compared the original script. Anyway, the unofficial name for this fic is Operation: Amy Smiles because it’s dedicated to her. She’s been having a rough go of it recently and I’m hoping that this fic will make her smile. A special thanks to @wellpthisishappening, @katie-dub and @awkwardnessandbaseball for pulling the double duty of cheerleading and beta-reading. You’re absolutely fantastic.

When Henry Mills was younger, he had prayed for the model family - a loving mother, supportive father and a bunch of little siblings to love and adore him. Now that he was older, he had long since decided that the perfect family unit was more than a little overrated and he truly had been blessed with two moms, a pirate pseudo-step dad and two very attentive grandparents. The set-up allowed him to have three different places he could crash, two bedrooms to call his own, two sets of gaming systems and more interesting gifts than the average child had on holidays.

While all of those benefits seemed well and good, Henry’s personal favorite was being able to jump ship and head over to one parent’s house if the other was mad at him. It allowed him to avoid any further ire that he was likely to face if he stayed with the offended mother in question.

Like now for example.

To say Regina was pissed at him was an understatement. She had been on his ass since the beginning of the school semester about his grades, yet nothing he did seemed to be please her. He had a C+ in algebra. So, what? It’s not like he needed to know anything about polynomials in real life.  It was honestly a waste of his time.

Apparently, Regina didn’t think though because she had taken away both his X-Box and his PlayStation One despite the fact that he had been planning a campaign with his friends in Overwatch that night. She had gone completely overboard on this C+ thing. It wasn’t like he was failing in math! (Unlike gym class but that was a different story altogether. Gym class was lame. Playing handball was pointless and he got much more of a workout during sword fighting lessons with Killian and his grandfather than he ever did in that farce of class.)

However, as annoying as it was, Henry didn’t put up much of a fuss when Regina took away his gaming systems. It was annoying but the answer to his Overwatch problems was simple. He would simply just walk over to his other mother’s house and play over there. Emma and Killian never seemed to care as long as he told them his homework was done and rarely did they ever check.

So, with his mastermind plan formulated in his mind, he waited a half an hour for Regina to calm down over the grade situation and casually pulled on his coat.

“Where are you going?” She asked him, eyes narrowed to slits and arms crossed in front of her chest; her typical intimidating mom pose.

“I’m going to the library. I can’t study here.”

“Why? You have a perfectly good desk in your room and my study at your disposal.”

“Well, I have an essay due next week and I need primary source materials in it.” It wasn’t a lie. He did have an essay. He just didn’t plan on starting it until the night before it was due.

Her suspicious gaze didn’t waver.

“What class is this in?”

“English.”

“What’s the essay covering?”

Henry had honestly no idea what the essay was about but he could only assume it had something to do with F. Scott Fitzgerald because he was supposed to be reading The Beautiful and Damned. (He would look up the Sparknotes on it later. Fitzgerald had a tendency to be dry and repetitive in his writing.)

“Ummm...it’s a comparative analysis on Fitzgerald and Hemingway.”

“Have you started it?”

“No.”

“When is it due?”

“Next Wednesday.”

“Fine but be back before ten. I’m cutting your curfew.”

“Are you serious?”

“As the grave, Henry David Mills.”

He let out a noise of frustration but held back his tirade on how unfair it was. She was letting him leave and he could totally just say he met up with Emma and decided to crash at her place. He couldn’t imagine Regina being that upset about it despite the fact it was technically her week.

“Fine,” he replied, barely keeping the attitude out of his voice. “Am I allowed to meet up with Mom and Killian for dinner?”

“I don’t see why not but I was going to make steak tonight.”

Henry wasn’t going to raise to that bait, instead he looked down at his phone and pretended he was looking at a text.

“I’ll text you if anything happens.”

“Good.”

“Bye Mom.”

“Study hard. I love you.”

He didn’t answer her and a part of him realized he was being unfair to her, but he was still angry with her over the X-Box situation. Sure, he had already figured out how to get around her punishment, but he wished that it hadn’t come to this.

A small pang of guilty hit his chest for lying to Regina as he passed by the library on his way to Emma’s. He wasn’t in the habit of doing it as much as some of his friends were, but desperate times called for desperate measures and his team wouldn’t survive without him. Despite their lack of acknowledgment on the subject, they would not have advanced as far as they had without Henry’s tactical decision to play as Mercy. (Though playing as her wasn’t nearly as epic as it used to be now that the game developers had dramatically reduced her healing and resurrection abilities. He had been so mad about the new modifications that he had go on a gigantic rant to Killian, who had merely blinked at him owlishly and nodded his head along without really listening.)

When he arrived at Emma’s house, he was semi-surprised that the front door was locked. He frowned. It was a little after six and the lights were on, so they were definitely home. It made absolutely no sense for the door to be locked. Immediately he went fishing for his key, only to find that just peppermints, loose bills and his cell phone were in his pockets. He had forgotten it. This was an easy fix though. He could simply hop the fence and go in through the backdoor that lead into the kitchen.

As he climbed over the picket, Henry suddenly regretted quitting the track team. He had completely fallen out of practice with high jumps and he had put in more effort than he would have liked into getting over the wooden panels. He landed in his mother’s backyard with a wince as he rolled his ankle on the landing. It was gonna hurt like a bitch.

It didn’t necessarily help that he had to fumble his way up the back steps of the house to reach the door. For some reason, his mother and stepdad (it was just easier to call Killian his stepdad at this point) had decided to draw all the window curtains closed, leaving him in perpetual darkness. However, despite tripping up a few times, he managed to make it to the backdoor without too much difficulty.

The door was unlocked.

(He really wished it hadn’t been.)

The first thing that registered was the sounds. The near violent slaps of flesh hitting flesh companied the grating noise of wood being scraped across the kitchen floor. Though horribly loud, neither of those were able to cancel out the distinct male grunting and hiccupped gasps coming from the nightmarish display in front of him.

What he saw, Henry couldn’t forget no matter how much he wanted to. He had walked in on probably the most horrifying scene in the universe, his own personal idea of hell - Killian and his mother having disgustingly enthusiastic sex on the kitchen table. They were still relatively clothed, but his stepfather’s ridiculously tight jeans were pushed to his knees; his pale white hairy ass framed by his mother’s bare legs. The image would be forever burned into his retinas. No amount of brain cleaner would erase it.

“What the fuck!” The words escaped his lips before he could control them.

There was a grating ear-murdering screech as the table halted and the activity in front of him ceased. Emma, who had been laying prostrate on the table, turned her head to look at Henry in positive horror, her hands immediately pulling down her shirt and bra which had been bunched up to her shoulders. Killian, on the other hand, glanced at him over his shoulder with a look of pure menace on his face. If Henry hadn’t been so traumatized by the display, he would have been terrified.

“Henry!”

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t handle it. He needed to get away from there and fast. He didn’t acknowledge his mother’s calls, he turned and backed out of the house and out into the backyard. He slammed the door as he did so, trying put a barrier between himself and the image of his, well, parents having sex.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

The litany of swears that left his mouth did nothing to relieve the sheer and utter hysteria that was rising in his chest. His situation with Regina was peanuts to the minefield he had unwittingly walked into. This was a thousand times worse than anything his other mother could have doled out as punishment. He would sacrifice months, years even, of gaming in order to erase the scene that was so ingrained in his mind.

Even with the door closed, he could still hear Killian and Emma talking in frantic voices that were getting louder and more hysterical by the second. It seemed he wasn’t the only one having a panic attack.

“Oh my fucking god.”

“Calm down, Swan.”

“Oh my fucking god.”

“Love, breathe.”

“He saw us having sex! He saw my tits!”

“I’m well aware, Swan. I was there. I believe the common phrase ‘caught with your trousers down’ just became quite literal.”

“Not helping. We to do something. We need to fix this! Right now!”

“You might want to take a moment before approaching the boy, love.”

“Why? We can’t push this off!”

“Well, you have...you have a bit of a wet spot on your shirt...”

Henry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to know. He really didn’t. He honestly wished the deck would just open up and swallow him whole right at this very moment. He had always known in the back of his mind that there was...a physical element to their relationship. They had been together for what seemed like ages now. However, it was one thing to know about it and an entirely different thing to see it.

The door opened but he refused to look, still mortified and afraid of what he might see.

“Henry...”

Gathering his courage, he turned to face her and was relieved to see that she was now decently dressed and wearing Killian’s jacket, which seemed to dwarf her and covered almost her entire body from view. The only true evidence of the act he had just witnessed was the messiness of her hair, which was sticking out at odd angles. There was a tight nervous smile on her face that looked almost as pained as he felt.

When he didn’t answer her, she shifted uncomfortably in the doorway. He would have had some sympathy for her, if he wasn’t busy feeling sorry for himself.

“Um hi.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a nervous tick. “Sooo...what are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you.”

“Obviously.”

She winced at that. “There’s no way we can pretend this never happened, is there?”

“No. I’m absolutely gonna need even more therapy. Seriously, Mom, the kitchen table?”

“We weren’t expecting anyone.”

“People eat there! I eat there!” His voice got louder as he spoke. “Now, it’s got sex germs all over it! I can’t even look at it! I’m gonna get hepatitis or something! We gotta burn it!”

“If you’re worried about the table, perhaps we should burn both of the couches too because they’re also lost causes,” Killian remarked as he pushed the door open further, settling in next to Henry’s mother. He placed a kiss on the top of her head and pulled her close by wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He looked a touch more put together than Emma but there was a slightly pinched expression on his face that gave away the fact he was still frustrated.

“Really? You’re still gonna do that in front of me after the trauma I just experienced?” Henry practically squawked.

“I hardly see how a mere kiss would set you off in comparison to our....kitchen dealings.”

“I’m gonna throw up.”

Killian’s eyebrows rose to his hairline at his declaration and immediately looked down at Emma with an almost smile.

“And you say I’m dramatic.”

She didn’t seem to find the same humor he was finding in the situation because she let out a pained groan and pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes screwed shut.

“You are seriously not helping. At all.”

“There’s nothing to help. The boy saw us. We stopped. It’s over. Nothing can be done except to move on.”

“The boy is standing right here,” Henry replied in annoyance, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Of that, I am very much aware, lad.”

“I live here too!”

“Another fact I’m also aware of, but I also know it’s Regina’s week with you so I cannot help but be curious as to why you’re here.”

“Killian!” Emma admonished, striking him across the chest. The pirate paid her no mind however, merely quirked one of his eyebrows at him as if to say ‘well, I’m waiting.’

Henry squirmed in his spot, unable to continue looking at them; a sense of panic and guilt intermingling with his mortification. He wasn’t sure he could put him off the same way he had put off Emma. He tried a new tactic.

“Are you suggesting I’m not welcome here during Regina’s weeks?”

“Absolutely not but that doesn’t change the fact you didn’t let either of us know you were coming. A word to the wise, my boy, never try to manipulate a master manipulator. Now, answer the question.”

It had a been a while since Henry had thought of Killian as Captain Hook. The days where he was the villain they fought against seemed like eons ago and Henry had grown used to seeing him as his mother’s fun live-in boyfriend as well as a pseudo-father figure. Now, he was reminded that for hundreds of years this man commanded a pirate crew with absolute authority.

“Well, lad?”  

“Umm...I just needed to get away from Mom for a bit.”

“Why?”

The question threw him off. Normally they just accepted the answer, ordered Henry’s favorite pizza and sat on the couch together to watch Indiana Jones or Star Wars. Then again, he had never walked in on them while they were...busy before. It was probably best that he defuse the situation as much as possible so that they would let him back into the house and let him play his game.

“Ummm...”

“Yes?” Killian was looking at him expectantly while Emma looked slightly confused by the line of questioning.

“Well, you know, she’s just in one of her moods.” It wasn’t a lie. She was in one of her moods. He just hadn’t told them why.

A look of understanding and empathy crossed his mother’s face and she turned to open the door more, but Killian remained unmoved. If anything, his quirked eyebrow rose even higher.

“And why is she in...one of her moods?”

Emma finally turned to Henry’s defense, glaring at him and crossing her arms in front of her chest. It was her classic disciplinarian pose that she used on everyone from dwarves to teenage boys to centuries old pirate captains.

“Would you stop grilling him! How is he supposed to know that? You know how Regina can be sometimes! It probably has nothing to do with him!”

“Aye, I do know how the queen can be, but I also know she’s been on him about slacking off in school and that our boy here failed his algebra quiz last week.”

“What?” Both Henry and Emma exclaimed in near unison. Both of their eyes went wide, hers in maternal fury and his in shock.

“How the hell do you know that! Have you been snooping through my stuff! What the hell, Killian!”

“No. No need to snoop when you leave things out in the open. I was cleaning your room, which by the way, is more disgusting than any bilge I’ve seen, and it was on your desk...with a false signature on it nonetheless. I would commend your forgery skills but you made the E in Emma’s signature more curved than crisp.”

“You failed a math test? And forged my signature?” The angry questions punctuated with a growing look of outrage.

“Woah! Woah! Woah! It was a quiz, not a test. I’m not failing math, I promise…”

“What exactly does 'not failing' mean?”

“Not failing means…ughhhh…not failing?”

Neither of them looked impressed by this explanation.

“Henry…” There was an undercurrent of warning to her voice that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. “What is your grade in math?”

“Something around the range of B- or C+.”

“Which one are we closer to?” It was Killian who asked this time.

He let out a heavy sigh. This night had gone from horrible to catastrophic. “The C+.”

Emma let out a frustration noise, smashing her head against the door frame and rubbing her temples.

“Are you kidding me? Henry! You’re way too smart to just have a C+ in a class. What is going on with you?”

“It’s polynomials! Who cares!” he exclaimed. “I bet you don’t even remember what those are!”

“Of course I don’t! I didn’t finish high school!” she exclaimed, looking positively furious. “Do you know how hard it was for me to find a job with no high school diploma and a rap sheet? Do you?”

Now he had gone and put his foot in his mouth. Emma’s lack of education had been a serious sore spot with her since he started high school and Henry had started looking to Killian for homework help rather than her. He couldn’t stop stepping on landmines tonight, could he?

She obviously wasn’t looking for an answer to her question as she didn’t wait for him to give one. She glared up at him with her hands on her hips, jaw set in a way he had only seen when she was in battle. The Savior had apparently shown up alongside Captain Hook to admonish him. It really wasn’t his night.

“This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to go back to Regina’s. I’m sure she’s going to do everything in her power to keep you studying and when you come back here this weekend, you’re going to continue studying. No phone. No video games. No television. And when you're done with your assignments, you’re going to go over them with Killian to make sure they’re done properly. Do I make myself clear?”

“But” - “I didn’t ask for any buts,” she interrupted him. “Do I make myself clear?”

His shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Yeah…”

“Good.  Now go study. We’ll see you this weekend.”

Regina didn’t ask why he was home earlier than expected. She just wordlessly pulled out another steak from the refrigerator. She seemed to sense he was upset about something and gave him his space, only becoming firm with him when he tried to skip out on the portion of steamed broccoli. It wasn’t until he was cutting through his porterhouse that he realized how artfully Killian had turned the situation on Henry so that everyone had forgotten about the kitchen incident and focused on his less than perfect grades.

Master manipulator, indeed.


End file.
